


Drive

by jujubiest



Series: Coldflash Trope-iness [3]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - No Powers, M/M, coldflash - Freeform, fanfic tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-17 06:50:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5858626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry gets tired of trying to avoid the smirky, blue-eyed new barista at Jitters and decides he's going to get his coffee, come hell or high water. But when he gets there, what he finds is a little more than he bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based off this prompt: You were chased by the cops, got in my car and just yelled "Drive!" ([Source](http://perfectlyrose.tumblr.com/post/112699910904/tokiosunset-people-should-do-more-meet-ugly-and))
> 
> Also, this follows directly from the previous two one-shots in the series, so if you haven't read those this probably won't make much sense.

Barry was running.

Not literally, god no. For one thing, he wasn’t a very fast runner. For another, he had a very strict personal policy against wheezing and being sweaty, both of which were direct and almost immediate side-effects of running.

But metaphorically? He was turning off the phone at work three minutes early every night and making his own coffee at home. He wasn’t even sure what about this nameless guy unnerved him so much, but every time he thought about talking to him again, _seeing_ him again, Barry’s stomach started doing somersaults.

Clearly, avoidance was the best possible course of action.

And it worked, at least for a little while. Until one morning when Barry woke up one Wednesday morning, and found that the water was shut off.

He groaned, remembering the chipper voicemail he’d listened to earlier that week, informing him that all water mains in his neighborhood would be shut off for seasonal maintenance after nine. He looked at the clock: nine-fifteen.

“Great. Fantastic.” No water meant no shower, no flushing the toilet, and no coffee. Not to mention dry-brushing his teeth. Barry scowled at the floor for a moment before getting up and making an attempt at making himself clean and presentable without any water.

By the time he was ready to go, he was _extremely_ irritable. He didn’t feel clean, which was bad enough, and he couldn’t quite wake all the way up. He needed his coffee.

He looked at the clock. If he drove to work, he could stop by a drive-thru Starbucks, or hell, a McDonald’s on the way. He sighed, thinking of Jitters’ perfect cappuccinos. Then he grabbed his keys and his jacket and headed outside, down the back stairs of his apartment building to the tiny little enclosed parking lot in back.

There were very few spaces back there, not nearly enough for the number of tenants in the building, so parking was an additional fee per month. Availability depended entirely on whether there was a space open when you moved in. Barry had gotten lucky.

He slid into the driver’s seat of his car—a boxy gray Volvo that was nearly as old as he was—and shut the door, cranked the ignition, backed very carefully out of the narrow parking space. He hated driving; it always made him feel impatient, and dealing with the dual ever-present plagues of bad city drivers and narrow, one-way city streets was more trouble than it was usually worth. But he really, _really_ wanted some coffee.

As he pulled up to the turn that would either take him toward work or toward the nearest Starbucks, he paused. _This is ridiculous,_ he thought. _I’m doing something I hate and risking making myself late for work just so I don’t have to see some guy that called me at work a couple of times._

He studiously didn’t think about the fact that the guy was gorgeous beyond belief, or that the way he said Barry’s name sounded nearly obscene.

Scowling, his jaw set stubbornly, Barry turned towards work. At this rate he could park across the street and run over to Jitters, and still be on time. Who did this hot— _annoying, obnoxious—_ guy think he was, anyway? Why should he make Barry avoid his favorite coffee spot? He was there first.

By the time he parked, paid the meter, and was walking across the street, Barry was in rare form, ready to get his coffee and _dare_ this guy—with his eyes, only, of course—to raise an eyebrow at him. He got in line—it was much shorter right before ten than before nine—and waited impatiently, wanting nothing more than to get his coffee and return that smirk with one of his own. One that clearly said ‘you don’t phase me, you hot rude asshole, not one bit. I am above being phased by you.’

But when he got to the counter, the hot, rude asshole was nowhere in sight. Instead it was Kendra, the regular barista, who smiled and greeting Barry with “the usual?”

Barry nodded, paid, and then—checking to make sure there was no one waiting behind him—leaned over the counter as she made his drink.

“Hey, Kendra? You know the guy who was here last week? The new barista?”

Kendra grinned at him over her shoulder.

“Tall, blue eyes, always scowling?” Barry nodded. “Oh, that’s Len. Yeah, he just started working her a couple of weeks ago, and then he just up and quit this morning.”

“He…he quit?”

“Yeah,” she said, coming back to the counter with his drink. He took it from her absently, a troubled expression on his face.

“Listen,” she said. “If you see him, tell him he’s an ass. Covering the morning rush by myself was no picnic.”

“Uh, I doubt I will, but I’ll be sure to pass that along if I do,” he said, mustering a smile for her. “Thanks, Kendra!”

He waved goodbye and headed outside, nearly sagging with relief as the first taste of the hot coffee touched his lips. Still, there was a niggling feeling of…disappointment? He realized he’d actually been looking forward to seeing the guy again, even if only to glare imperiously at him from across the counter.

He got in his car and set his coffee carefully in the cup holder, buckled his seat belt, and started digging his keys out of his pocket. He’d just gotten them out and stuck them in the ignition when someone yanked open his passenger side door and threw themselves into the seat.

Barry stared, open-mouthed. It was him. The guy, with the eyes and the scowl and the indecent voice. _Len._

At the moment, his eyes were alight with a hectic excitement. His scowl was nowhere to be found, and when he spoke his voice was tinged with an urgency that Barry responded to without even thinking.

“Drive!” Len said, half-plea, half-command. Some switch flipped in Barry’s brain and he turned the key in the ignition, shifted gears, and pulled smoothly out of the parking spot and into the flow of light mid-morning traffic, heading away from Jitters, and work, and probably a fair amount of his own sanity. _What am I_ doing _?_

What he said was: “Where are we headed?”

He was rewarded with a look of faint surprise, quickly melting into that smirk Kendra had mentioned. Barry felt his heart turn over and speed up, zero to a mile a minute in half a second.

“Destination’s on you, kid,” he drawled. “Where d’you wanna go?”

Barry had a few ideas about that, but he also had a feeling that whatever had prompted Len to throw himself into Barry’s car, it meant he needed to get _away_ , lay low for a bit.

He flashed Len a quick, secretive grin and then turned his attention back to the road, completely missing the way those blue eyes lit up, and how they kept skirting over to look at him as they drove, leaving the city behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The shitty car Barry drives is a 1994 gray Volvo 440. Also known as the anxious mom car. And yes, Len is a criminal in this AU, just one without a cold gun. And maybe Barry is a little less concerned with things like law and order. Just a bit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry makes a decision, and Len takes a detour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is inspired by the whole road trip cliche. Deserted backroads, heart-to-hearts about random topics, awful nostalgia music, etc.

“So,” Len said at last. They were a few miles outside the city now, the sun bright in the sky above them. It was nearly eleven, and Barry couldn’t quite keep his eyes from drifting down to the clock on the dashboard every few minutes or so. By now his boss would be wondering where the hell he was. A part of him felt bad for skipping out on her like that, with no warning. But a much bigger part was elated, delighted, like a kid skipping class for the first time and getting away with it.

That first small part was still more than grateful for the welcome distraction of a conversation.

“So?” He repeated, turning it into a question. He kept his voice light, trying not to sound as keyed up as he felt.

“Where exactly are we headed?”

“I dunno,” Barry said, a sheepish grin flitting across his face for a moment. “Where exactly do you wanna go, Len?”

Len turned in his seat to fix Barry with a hard stare that he could feel even if he couldn’t quite see it clearly in his peripheral vision.

“Uh, Kendra…at the coffee shop. I asked about you, and she mentioned your name.”

“You asked about me?” Len smirked, sitting back in his seat. Barry kept his eyes resolutely on the road, but he could feel the heat creeping up his neck. He shrugged, one-shouldered.

“She said you quit your job.”

“Yeah, I decided I didn’t have the personality for customer service.”

“Imagine that,” Barry said sardonically. “What were you running from?”

Len was silent for a moment, his eyes still boring through the side of Barry’s face. Barry wondered what he was searching for.

“The job was part of a strategy,” he said finally. “I needed a way to scope out the jewelry store across the street.”

Barry’s eyebrows shot up.

“You _robbed_ the jewelry store across the street from Jitters?”

“Well I didn’t drop in to leave the owner a bag of cookies, kid.”

“Right, okay.” Barry tried to take deep breaths. “So...I was just the getaway driver for a jewelry store heist. Shit. I’m an accomplice. I’m aiding and abetting!” His voice climbed a little in both pitch and volume with every word.

“Hey, hey, kid…don’t freak out on me.”

“I’m not freaking out!” Barry insisted, trying to regulate his voice down to a normal level. “I’m not. I just…surprised.”

“Surprised? What exactly did you think some guy jumping into your car and yelling ‘drive’ _meant_?”

“I dunno!” Barry said. “It’s not like I thought long and hard about it!”

“Clearly,” Len drawled. “Look, kid, you don’t have to put yourself out on my account. You can drop me off at the nearest town with a bus stop. Go home, tell whoever needs to be told that you overslept, you were sick, whatever. Nobody knows you even know who I am. No reason you have to be connected to this at all.”

Now it was Barry’s turn to fall silent, considering.

First of all, this whole thing was insane. He was a good guy, or he liked to think so. A cop’s kid, no less…or foster kid, anyway. He’d never been in trouble before in his _life,_ not even a parking ticket for driving too fast. He paid his bills and his taxes. He got to work on time, most days.

He had family back there in Central City, people who loved him. He thought of Joe, his foster dad, who’d taken him in when he was twelve and treated him like a son ever since. And Iris, his best friend and practically his sister. They were so proud of him. What would they think of this, when they found out?

There was no reason for him to torpedo his entire life for this guy he didn’t even know.

But…the sun was bright. The road was in front of him, a shimmering gray ribbon of possibilities stretching toward the horizon. And when he looked at Len sitting in the seat next to him, he felt _something._ Some tangle of emotions he couldn’t even put a name to. But whatever it was, he wanted to keep feeling it.

His life in Central City was good…safe, predictable. In a word: boring. Barry didn’t remember a time in _years_ when he hadn’t been bored out of his mind, other than the three times he’d spoken to Len in the past two weeks. But he sure as hell wasn’t bored now.

“No,” he said, his heart pounding. “I think I’ll see this thing through.”

Len sighed.

“Listen, kid—”

“My boss will know I’m missing from work. Kendra saw me at the coffee shop just before the robbery. I _asked_ her about you, specifically. And I have no idea who might have seen you get into my car, but even if nobody did I’m pretty sure there’s at least one camera on that street that could have picked us up.”

He looked over at Len briefly, offering him a rueful half-smile.

“I’m no forensic scientist, but I’m pretty sure there’s enough of a connection to merit some questions.”

Len eyed him for a moment, his face a mask of calculation. But there was something underneath it, Barry could tell. Something pulling him to Barry the same way Barry felt pulled to him.

Or so he hoped.

“Alright,” Len said slowly, eventually. “Road trip it is. We’ll visit a friend of mine. He’s a fence. Take the next exit, kid. We need to hit the freeway. And it wouldn’t kill you to speed up a little.”

Barry’s face stretched into a wicked grin.

“You got it,” he said, and pressed the gas.

* * *

They drove without stopping until well into the afternoon, and Barry gradually found, to his surprise, that he liked driving when he was outside of the city. He cracked the windows a little after a while, letting the dull roar of the breeze fill some of the silence between them. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but he liked the fresh air and he found the white noise soothing.

Len seemed to agree. He relaxed in his seat, tilting his head back and closing his eyes, basking in the bit of sun that filtered through the windshield. His face was just as arresting in repose as it was awake, and Barry was finding it hard to concentrate on driving.

With those distracting blue eyes closed it was easier to pay attention to other things, like the way the planes of his face started out so severe at his cheekbones and gradually faded down to the gentle curve of his jaw…or the way his lips formed a perfectly symmetrical bow. He looked younger like this than Barry had previously thought him, gentler somehow.

A loud grating noise alerted him that he was drifting a bit to one side. He snapped his attention back to the road, straightening them out just as Len opened his eyes, the softness Barry had imagined crystalizing into the more familiar, shrewd façade. He gave Barry a cobalt-tinted side-eye, frowning.

“You need a break, kid? We can switch out if you want.”

Barry briefly weighed the pros and cons of having a complete stranger drive his car and quickly decided it would be worth it for a chance to focus on Len unhindered. Besides, it wouldn’t even be the dumbest thing he’d done today. He nodded and took the next exit off the highway, pulling into a gas station and killing the engine.

“I need to fill the tank,” he said, though Len hadn’t asked. “Don’t worry, I won’t use a card. I have cash.”

“I think that’s for the best,” Len said, not looking at Barry but out his window at the gas station. “Because I don’t think this… _place_ you’ve brought us to knows about credit card technology yet.”

Barry took a closer look at their surroundings and grimaced. He could see what Len meant. The main building of the station looked like it used to be someone’s falling-down old barn. The wooden walls were gray with age, and the roof was actually made of tin. When he turned to look at the gas pump, he saw with dismay that it was one of the really old ones with rotating numbers instead of a digital display.

“Are we even sure this gas is compatible with 20th-century cars?” He asked. Len huffed. Not quite a laugh, but clearly almost one, his mouth turning up at the corners. The sight gave Barry the most bizarre sense of accomplishment, and he had no idea why. It wasn’t like making the guy laugh was a big feat. For all he knew, Len spent his weekends watching stand-up comedy and laughing till he was in tears.

Somehow, though, he kind of doubted it.

“Be right back,” he said, unable to keep the buoyancy from his voice. Len shot him a quizzical look, that little smile still in place. He answered it with a big grin of his own, then turned and headed across the tiny, crumbling parking lot to the door of the station.

A bell jingled over his head as he pushed it open and stepped inside. The interior was dim and cool, and smelled disconcertingly like his converted-barn theory was probably correct. The checkout counter was just inside the door, and the grizzled, gray old man seated behind it was eyeing him suspiciously as he approached.

“Hey,” Barry said amiably. “Can I get twenty bucks’ worth of gas?” He dug his wallet out of his pocket as he spoke, producing a crumpled twenty and offering it to the man, who looked at it and then at the car outside before replying.

“Which pump?”

Barry blinked. He looked outside, at his car parked by one of two pumps in an otherwise completely empty lot. _Seriously? Which pump?_

“Uh, pump number one,” he said aloud, opting not to make a big thing of it. Maybe the guy had trouble seeing the numbers from here.

“You got it,” the old guy said, ringing Barry up. He didn’t offer to print a receipt.

“Thanks,” Barry said, shrugging it off. He turned and headed back out, ready to grapple with the ancient gas tank. But when he got there, he saw that Len had already beaten him to it. He was leaning casually against the side of Barry’s car and gazing absently at the wall of trees on the other side of the road that ran past the station, his hand resting on the gas nozzle.

“You ever hate living in the city?” He asked, apropos of nothing. Barry settled his back against the sun-warm metal of the car, his shoulder just an inch from brushing against Len’s. He considered the question for a moment, watching the numbers on the tank turn slowly.

“I dunno,” he said. “I hate the rent and the shitty parking. But I guess it’s not so bad. Easier to find an IT job in the city than in the middle of nowhere. Plus—” he cut himself off before he could finish the sentence. _My family is there._ It seemed strange to talk about them here, wrong even, when he knew what he was doing would disappoint and hurt them both so much.

“You got family there,” Len finished for him. “Parents? Siblings? Friends?” Something about the way he said it made Barry think there was another question he wasn’t asking, but he couldn’t be sure exactly what it was.

“Just my foster dad, actually, and my foster sister. They’ve been my family since I was a kid. Joe knew my parents, and he took me in after they died.”

There was a time Barry couldn’t complete that sentence without a choked pause, but that had been a long time ago now. Sometimes he felt bad about being able to talk about them so easily, without the gut-wrenching pain that used to accompany even the thought of them. But he’d had time to heal, and a good life with Joe and Iris. A guilty little part of him couldn’t imagine not growing up as Joe’s son, Iris’s brother. He’s not even sure who that guy would turn out to be.

“As for friends…I dunno. I don’t get along with that many people, I guess.”

Len looked at him incredulously.

“Why do I find that hard to believe.”

Barry couldn’t help but smile at that.

“Thanks, but really…I think I put most people off. I get too excited and start rambling, usually about things no one else cares about. And I’m terrible about cancelling plans…I just get distracted. Iris doesn’t mind, and there’s also my friend Felicity from college…but she lives in Star City, so I hardly ever see her.”

He fell silent as the gas tank finally rolled over to 20.00 and Len replaced the nozzle. He closed the gas cap and slid into the passenger seat. Len slipped into the driver’s seat next to him, readjusting the seats and the driver’s side mirror before cranking the car.

“Buckle up,” Barry said automatically, then turned red when Len fixed him with a look of amused disbelief.

“Sure, kid,” was all he said, buckling his seatbelt and then putting the car into drive, pulling them out onto the road.

“Uh, highway’s that way,” Barry said, as Len turned the wrong direction.

“Relax,” he said. “You ever hear of taking the scenic route?”

“I always thought ‘the scenic route’ was dad-speak for ‘I’m lost and I don’t want to admit it.’”

Len huffed another one of his almost-laughs.

“Yeah, well, I’m nobody’s dad, far as I know. And I don’t get lost. Hard to do when you don’t have a set destination.”

Barry shrugged it off and made himself comfortable. He looked out the window at the rushing wall of green forest for a while, but eventually he got bored and turned toward the much more interesting subject of study in the driver’s seat.

Len had those eyes of his fixed on the road, one hand relaxed on the steering wheel and the other propped against the center console. He looked completely at home there, like he belonged in that seat. Barry had a feeling he would look like that no matter where he was sitting: like it was made around him, to make him look good.

Len’s eyes flicked over to look at him, then back to the road. Barry noticed he hadn’t asked how his parents had died, and he was grateful for that. It always seemed more like morbid curiosity than concern, when the first thing out of a person’s mouth was a request for gory details about the event that turned him into an orphan.

“I have a sister,” Len offered. “Lisa. She’s a real pain in my ass.”

Barry snorted.

“Yeah, Iris can be like that if you cross her. But I’d do anything for her.”

“Yeah,” Len said softly. “I know the feeling.” It sounded like it was hard for him to admit to it, to caring about someone so much he’d go to any great lengths for them. Barry tucked that thought away for later.

“So,” he said, trying to lighten the suddenly somber mood within the car. “How d’you feel about alternative rock?”

Len’s eyebrows crept up his forehead.

“I feel…great trepidation.”

“Good,” he said. He picked up the arm Len had propped on the console and propped it over the back of his seat, then opened the console and went rummaging through the collection of cassette tapes hidden there.

Len tensed up at the brief moment of contact, but relaxed almost immediately when he saw what Barry was doing.

“Cassette tapes? Are you kidding? Kid, are you a _lot_ older than you look or something?”

“Well-preserved,” Barry quipped, still rummaging, then laughed at the look on Len’s face. “Kidding. I’m twenty-five. Fully half of these tapes are actually older than I am. The collection came with the car. They were Joe’s mostly, and my mom and dad’s, and Iris gave me some of her mom’s a few years back. In case you haven’t noticed, this car isn’t exactly up to compact disc standards, and I hate listening to the radio.”

“You and me both,” Len conceded. “So what did your parents listen to back in the day? And I hope you realize that if I recognize too many of these, this could get very weird.”

“Dude, this got weird the second you used the phrase ‘back in the day.’ Here…try this one.” He shoved a tape in the cassette player and waited for the opening notes to sound. The second they did, Len took his eyes off the road to glare at Barry in mute consternation and horror.

_Whatta-man, whatta-man, whatta-man, whatta mighty good man! Gotta say it again, now! Whatta-man, whatta-man, whatta-man, whatta mighty good man! He’s a mighty good man!_

“You’re joking.”

Barry was too busy bobbing his head to the music to confirm or deny.

“Please. Anything else. I’m having flashbacks to my high school prom.”

That caused Barry to stop and stare at Len for a second. He leaned in close, squinted at him in the late afternoon sunlight. Then he bounced back into his seat.

“Yeah, no way,” he said. “No way you’re that old.”

“I’m…how did you put it? Well-preserved.”

“Right. Bathe in the blood of virgins?”

“Not recently.”

“Sure. Okay, how about this one?” He replaced the offending cassette with another, and the slightly flat sound of a guitar repeating the same riff over and over filled the car, overlaid with a light, tuneless tenor stringing together short, staccato phrases.

“Is this ‘The Sweater Song?’” Len’s incredulity made Barry laugh.

“Yes! You know it. This is one of my favorites.”

“The…Sweater Song. Is one of your favorites.” Flat disbelief.

“Of course! I mean, just listen to it. It’s awful. But like…you know those days when you just want to stay under a pile of blankets forever? This song sounds like that feels.”

“Huh,” was all Len said. But as they bumped down the broken little backroads, a wall of trees rising up on either side of them, Barry was certain he heard Len start to hum along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs mentioned at the end are "Whatta Man" by Salt-N-Pepa and "Undone (The Sweater Song)" by Weezer. Two stellar pieces of proof that the 90s were a golden era for music (I'm only being half-ironic, I fucking love the 90s).


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Len and Barry stop for the night, and things get horizontal before they go sideways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for this not being smuttier. I tried to write a lemon and I didn't even manage a lime. Also, this chapter makes use of one of my personal favorites in the trope lexicon: "There is only one bed."

Barry must have fallen asleep somewhere between the state line and sunset, because the next thing he knew there was a hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently awake. He opened his eyes and stared blearily up at a pitch-black sky through his dirty windshield. He blinked sleep from his eyes and looked over at Len, the source of the shoulder-shaking.

“Hey,” he mumbled.

“Finally,” Len sighed. “You’re hard to wake up, you know that?”

“Sorry.” Barry sat up and looked around, disoriented. “Where are we?”

“We’re somewhere between Indiananapolis and Chicago.”

“When did it get dark?”

Len quirked a grin.

“About half an hour after you nodded off. C’mon, kid, let’s go sleep in actual beds.”

Barry followed Len out of the car, looking around curiously. If the gas station he’d picked earlier was sketchy, it had nothing on this place. The parking lot wasn’t very large, nor was it paved; loose gravel crunched under his feet as he walked. The building they were moving toward was a long, low one-story motel. There was a neon sign giving its name that should have been tall enough to see from the road, except that all the letters except for the T in “motel” were burned out.

“Nice,” Barry commented, voice thick with sarcasm, as they walked past the sign and up to the door of the office.

“Beats waking up with a crick in your neck from sleeping in a car all night,” Len shot back.

Barry wasn’t sure he wouldn’t rather just risk the crick in his neck, but he didn’t say anything else. He stopped just outside the tiny office, leaving Len to go inside and speak to the manager. Once the door shut behind him, Barry pulled out his phone. He’d turned it off as soon as they left the city, not wanting to see it light up every time someone else tried calling to find out where he was. He considered for a moment, then decided to leave it off. He doubted anyone would actually be trying to _track_ him on it, but better safe than sorry.

He wandered around the side of the building. There was a gap between the office building and the main body of the motel, a covered inlet that sheltered an ice machine and a vending machine. Barry dug some crumpled bills out of his pocket, trying not to think too hard about how little cash he had left on him. He bought a couple of drinks and tucked them under his arm, then turned and headed back toward the office.

Len was just closing the door behind him.

“Everything okay, kid?”

“Yeah,” Barry said, smiling. “’M’just tired.”

“Well, follow me, then,” Len said, holding up a set of keys and grinning. There was a glint in his eye, there was a note in his voice that made Barry’s ears perk up, made him suddenly feel anything _but_ tired. Then again, maybe he was only seeing what he wanted to see, hearing what he wanted to hear.

He followed Len down the row of doors until he stopped in front of number eight. Len unlocked the door and they both shuffled inside, fumbling in the dark for a light switch. Barry bumped into something, letting out a yelp of pain just as Len found the light and flipped it on.

It was small, dingy, and decorated in true motel fashion—which was to say, horribly. Barry was glad the only source of light was a barely-functioning wall lamp attached to the far wall, because even in that faint glow he could make out no less than three eye-bleeding, clashing patterns on the curtains, the carpet, and the bedspread.

 _The_ bedspread. Barry turned back to see Len standing with his hand still on the light switch, staring down at _the_ bed.

The _only_ bed.

“Great,” he said dully; he was so not awake enough for this. “Wanna flip a coin to see who’s sleeping in the shower?”

Len rolled his eyes.

“I’ll be right back.” He turned on his heel and left the room, leaving Barry alone.

Barry stared at the space where he’d been for a moment. He’d definitely been making it up in his head, then. The disappointment was sudden, and unexpectedly deep.

He sank down onto the edge of the bed, more than a little surprised at himself. What was it about this guy that drew Barry in so easily? He hadn’t asked, hadn’t tried…hell, he hadn’t even _hinted,_ that was just Barry’s stupid, overactive imagination running away with him. _Wishful thinking,_ whispered a voice in his head.

And the thought that that’s all it was, just Barry imagining things? Had his stomach tying itself into hard little knots. It couldn’t be healthy to feel like this for someone, especially not this quickly. He’d barely known him a day.

There was a noise, and Barry looked up to see Len stepping back inside. He closed the door behind him—perhaps a bit harder than strictly necessary—and locked it. He turned to Barry with a thunderous expression on his face, but it softened when their eyes met, fell into an apologetic grimace. Barry frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

“This is the only room they have,” he said flatly. “And they have a strict no-refunds policy.”

“Of course they do,” Barry grumbled, getting to his feet and running a hand through his hair in frustration. “Okay, well…I was kidding about the shower. We could always share the bed.”

Len smirked.

“You’re just saying that so I don’t make you sleep in the shower, seeing as I’m the one who paid for the room.”

“Yep,” Barry said blithely. “So which side do you take?”

Len nodded his head toward the side closer to the door, something unreadable in his expression. Barry nodded his acknowledgement.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Guess we should get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Len said. “Guess we should.”

Neither of them moved.

Suddenly, for the first time all day, things between them felt awkward. Barry stared at Len, trying to figure out what had just shifted, what had changed. After a solid minute of this, Len raised an eyebrow.

“Are you planning to watch me strip down?”

“Oh! No, god, I’m sorry.” Barry turned around, his entire face on fire. He thought he heard Len chuckle, and then the rustle of clothing being removed.

Barry thanked his lucky stars and the gods of a half-dozen different world religions that he hadn’t worn any embarrassing boxers today. No plaid, no ridiculous patterns…just basic red. He shucked off his jeans and folded them, pulled off his socks and his shoes and then tucked the former away into the latter. All the while he studiously avoided thinking too hard about the fact that Len was getting undressed behind him.

He toyed a moment with keeping his shirt on all night, but it was a little too warm for that, and anyway he _hated_ waking up to find his shirt bunched up around him. He pulled it off, folded it, and laid it on top of his jeans on the night stand, self-consciousness tightening his shoulders. He imagined he felt Len’s eyes on his back.

A cool hand touched his bare shoulder, and Barry yelped, spinning to find Len right behind him.

“Woah, kid,” he said, his voice soft and low. His hands gripped Barry’s shoulders, steadying him. “Calm down. You’ll wake the neighbors.”

“Sorry. Your, uh…hands are cold.”

Len dropped his hands, and Barry wanted to kick himself.

“You sure about this guy we’re meeting tomorrow?” He blurted, apropos of nothing. “I mean…he’s someone you can trust?”

Len’s mouth twitched. “You worried about me, Barry?”

A delicious little chill went up Barry’s spine. Back in Central City, when Len had first said his name he’d made it sound like something obscene, setting off a chain reaction of half-formed fantasies in Barry’s head. But ever since they’d left the city limits, he’d just been “kid.”

Now suddenly he was _Barry_ again, and the way Len said it was positively _filthy_.

Barry made himself look up, despite his blushing face, to meet Len’s eyes. There was heat in that gaze, a warm speculation in the way those blue eyes slipped from his to focus on his lips before Len dragged them back up reluctantly.

Barry didn’t think he was imagining it anymore.

“Would it be weird if I were worried?” He asked, going for coy but coming out hushed and painfully, nakedly honest instead. He winced internally at the sound of it. He sounded so _green_.

But Len was stepping in closer, eyes locked with Barry’s, brow furrowed and head tilted to the side, like Barry was a riddle and he was listening for the answer. He was close enough that Barry could have leaned in and bumped their noses together, which was a bizarre thought that he was _not_ going to follow through on.

Except that Len was already leaning forward, his eyes never leaving Barry’s, watching him for a sign of reluctance, any indication that he should stop.

Barry didn’t intend to give him one. He stayed perfectly still, unblinking, holding Len’s gaze until Len was only a hair’s breadth away. Then he closed his eyes and accepted the kiss on an intake of breath, warm dry lips against his own and rough, cool hands on his naked shoulders, just barely resting there, an anchor in a storm.

He sank into it, bringing his hands up to grip Len’s arms. He pulled him in that way, slowly, until they were almost chest-to-chest and he could feel the body heat radiating between them. The hands on his shoulders slipped, wandered, skimming the surface of his skin so lightly it almost tickled.

Barry shivered, those roaming fingers raising goosebumps in their wake. On an impulse he let his hands fall to Len’s hips and gripped there, pulling him in hard. Caught off balance, Len practically fell into him, toppling them both onto the bed with Len on top, caging Barry in with his arms and knees.

The fall jarred them out of the kiss, and for a moment they just looked at one another, wide-eyed, each of them holding their breath. Barry could practically _see_ Len re-evaluating the situation, still looking at Barry’s face like it was a giant question mark.

“Please,” Barry breathed. “Stop thinking so hard.”

Len hesitated, and Barry reached down between them, fingers skimming over Len’s stomach—admiring how the muscles tensed at the touch—and stopping just at the waistband of his boxers. They lingered there, tracing the line where bare skin met cotton-covered elastic. He dragged his eyes up to Len’s, and the wicked, cavalier smile he was trying for trembled and collapsed into something small and nervous at the raw hunger he saw there.

“This is a terrible idea,” Len half-whispered. Barry exhaled a laugh.

“I’ve had worse ideas, most of them in the last twenty-four hours.”

“Regretting your bout of aiding and abetting?” He smiled as he said it, but something in his voice made Barry feel the need to make it a joke.

“Who, me? Nah,” he scoffed. “Aiding fugitives from justice is my jam.”

“Your _jam_?”

“Stop judging my idioms and kiss me already.”

He didn’t mean it to sound so impatient, but Len just laughed, shook his head, and complied. Barry hummed his approval, pushing up on his elbows to chase more contact. Len wrapped an arm around his back and hauled him in close, their legs tangling together clumsily as Len tried to drag them more fully onto the bed without letting go.

When a need for air finally forced them apart, Barry opened his eyes to find his head on the pillows, Len still hovering over him, looking as breathless and dazed as he felt.

“We should—” Len started, and Barry surged up to kiss him again. Len groaned into his mouth, a noise of half-exasperated want that zipped down Barry’s spine and curled low in his stomach, hot and needy.

He knew there was no way Len didn’t feel the effect he was having, and the way he tensed against Barry confirmed it. He had a split second to worry that Len would pull away for real before he felt cool fingers tracing hesitantly up his thigh, stopping just short of the hem of his boxers.

His kisses grew shorter, shallower, until he was just barely brushing Barry’s lips with his own. Barry opened his eyes to find Len staring at him, waiting for permission.

He was pretty sure his entire body was screaming the answer, but it didn’t hurt to make it unmistakably clear, just in case.

He held Len’s gaze as he covered that long-fingered hand with his own, guiding it upward.

“Please,” he breathed.

Len was only too happy to grant his request.

* * *

Sometime in the early hours of the morning—it was still dark out—Barry woke to find himself mostly by himself on his side of the bed, but for the arm lying lightly over his hip.

He rolled over slowly and peered at Len through the darkness. He was sleeping on his side, the arm not draped over Barry tucked in close to his body, hand making a loose fist. Like he was ready for a fight, even in his sleep.

As his eyes adjusted, Barry examined the face before him. Len’s face was smooth in sleep, the smile and creases around his eyes completely gone. He reached out a hesitant hand and lightly traced the line of Len’s cheek.

He shifted in his sleep, and Barry moved to pull his hand back. Before he could, the arm resting on his hip reached out and grabbed it, and Len pulled him in close, burying a sleepy groan in the skin of his neck. Barry grinned and curled around him, twining his legs through Len’s and slipping the hand that wasn’t currently being held captive around to rest against the slight dip at the base of Len’s spine.

“Where were you going?” Len mumbled sleepily, surprising a laugh out of Barry.

“Hey! Stop talking, it tickles.”

He felt the smile.

“Yes sir,” Len said mockingly, and then left off talking in favor of peppering Barry’s neck with kisses.

“Oh, you’re evil,” Barry breathed, trying and failing to glare.

“I prefer to think of myself as morally gray.” He pressed a kiss to Barry’s temple, and Barry’s eyes fluttered closed, his heartbeat speeding up at the unexpected sweetness of the gesture.

“Len—” he started, not sure what he was going to say. He never found out, either, because at that moment someone started banging on the door.

“Leonard Snart! This is the Howard County sheriff’s department and Central City PD. Come out with your hands up.”

Barry looked at Len with wide eyes.

“Oh god,” he said. “That’s my dad.”

* * *

 

Barry sat on the edge of the bed in nothing but his boxers, heart racing as he watched Len move frenetically around the room, tossing the items of clothing scattered across it into his duffel bag. Len glared at him as he found his jeans and stopped to pull them on, disbelief warring with horror on his face. The spoke in frantic whispers that Barry only hoped wouldn’t carry beyond the paper-thin motel room walls.

“Your _father_ is a _cop_?!” Len hissed.

“Len—” Barry started, but Len interrupted him.

“ _Your father is a cop_!”

“Yes, but—”

“You didn’t think to _mention_ that at some point?”

“No, I didn’t think ‘by the way, my foster dad’s a detective’ would be the best icebreaker!”

“Great, just great. That’s just… _dammit._ ”

“I’m sorry!”

Len looked down at him, expression still angry and, Barry thought, a little betrayed. Barry didn’t know what else to say, so he just looked back at him sadly.

Len sighed, shoulders sagging.

“It’s okay,” he said, all the ire gone from his voice. “It’s not your fault. We really shouldn’t have stayed in the same place for this long, or used your car.”

The knot that had been twisted in Barry’s stomach since he’d heard Joe’s voice slowly loosened, and he realized with some concern that he was far more upset at the thought that Len would believe he’d betrayed him than he was at the thought of being arrested.

His priorities were so beyond fucked.

“Look, just…get dressed,” Len said. “The only reason they haven’t busted in here yet is that they don’t want you to get hurt.”

Barry’s eyes widened.

“Wait…they think I’m your _hostage_?”

Len grinned.

“Your dad probably _encouraged_ them to assume as much. Kidnapping,” he mused. “That’s one I didn’t have on my rap sheet.”

Barry was on his feet, pulling on his jeans awkwardly, one-handed, while he reached for his shirt with his other.

“No way,” he said. “I’m not letting you go down for kidnapping. I’ll tell them I went willingly—”

“No, you won’t,” Len said. And then, seeing that Barry was mostly dressed, he reached out and grabbed him by the arm with one hand, pulling him close as he reached behind himself and into the duffel bag on the table.

He kissed Barry hurriedly, and Barry felt himself melting into it in spite of the situation. But before he had time to get too carried away, it was over, and Len leaned in and breathed into his ear:

“Trust me?”

It was half-order, half-plea, and Barry felt himself nodding his agreement without really understanding what Len was asking. Then he was spun where he stood, yanked backward, flush against Len’s chest with an arm across his neck and something cold and hard pressed to his temple. He forgot to breathe.

“I’m coming out!” Len bellowed at the door. “And I have a hostage!”

Barry struggled, and Len tightened his grip just a little, just enough so that he had to stop trying to get away and focus on breathing. So Barry stopped.

He wasn’t afraid of the gun to his head; he knew Len wouldn’t actually shoot him. But he was pretty sure if he passed out on their way out of the door, the cops _would_ open fire. So he stayed still and let Len shuffle them slowly toward the door.

“No sudden moves,” Len called. “Or I _will_ shoot him.”

He sounded almost convincing.

Almost.

The gun left his temple, and Barry felt Len take a deep breath and then let it out, warm air ghosting over the back of his neck as he reached for the door.

“See you around, Barry,” he whispered. Then he pushed open the door and edged them out into the watery, early-morning sunlight.

* * *

Of all the bad ideas he’d had, Barry thought glumly, this had definitely been the worst…and that included the time he’d decided to try out for his high school football team. Iris and Joe had been worried sick, of course, and oh yeah…he _had_ actually aided in the commission of a crime. Even if it had been sort of unknowingly, at first.

He’d been going over and over it ever since they left the Howard County police station. Not just the details of his “missing day,” although he’d had to think fast to come up with how to fill in the blanks on _that_ one. But the way Len had made him _feel,_ the way he seemed to forget things like rules and that they mattered when he was around.

He’d managed to terrify and hurt every single person he cared about in less than forty-eight hours. He’d spent the entire ride home—as a passenger in Joe’s car, as his was currently _evidence_ —going through the texts in his phone. The Howard County police had allowed him to keep it with the stipulation that Joe would make a copy of his SIM card once they were back in Central City.

There were the early calls from his boss, wondering where he was and getting progressively more irritated. Then there were texts and calls from Iris and Joe, at least half a dozen of each, going from vaguely concerned to absolutely frantic. There was a single text from Felicity, calmly and tersely demanding that he text her back…which meant she’d been climbing the walls looking for him on satellite images, most likely.

He felt horrible for what he’d put them all through, and guilty at the way they were all treating him like a victim in all this. Still…some small, selfish part of him knew that if he could go back and do the day over, he wouldn’t change a thing. Except, maybe, to come up with a better alibi for himself for the day, so that he’d be able to get Len to his destination before anybody started worrying about where Barry had gone.

It was his fault his family had had to go through this, and his fault Len had gotten caught. Of course, Joe and Iris considered the latter a desirable outcome, and heaped all the blame for the former on Len alone.

“What kind of person does that to someone?” Iris had asked furiously, after she’d finally released Barry from a rib-cracking hug. “I hope they lock him up and throw away the key.”

It was all Barry could do not to open his mouth and blurt out the truth.

But he didn’t, and he wasn’t even sure why, except that he felt like Len still had some plan; he just wasn’t seeing all the moving parts, and if he said anything he would ruin it. Something about the way he’d said goodbye…

Joe had insisted Barry stay with him and Iris for a few days, and Barry hadn’t had the heart to tell him no. So there he was, on the couch curled in a blanket, thinking miserably about how badly he’d fucked Len over, and worrying about whether he’d be doing more harm by staying quiet or by ‘fessing up.

The phone rang. Barry moved to get up, but he could already hear Iris’s footsteps coming down the stairs.

“I’ve got it, Barry, stay put,” she said. He complied, gritting his teeth in frustration. He sank back into the couch, burrowing further into his blanket.

“Oh my god,” Iris’s voice filtered in from the hallway. “Are you sure? Okay…okay I’ll tell him.”

He heard her hang up.

“Barry,” she called softly. “Turn on the TV. Channel Six.”

Frowning, Barry reached for the remote and did as she asked. He stared, uncomprehending at first, at the picture that came up. It was Len, a mug shot—possibly an old one, his hair was completely black instead of peppered with gray—and a talking head explaining the story of the hour in that over-enunciated, agitated way of speaking they all seemed to share.

 _See you around,_ he had said. Barry could still feel the warmth of those words against his neck. He closed his eyes.

“Barry,” Iris said gently. “Are you okay?”

Barry didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.

“Barry…it’ll be okay. You can stay here, we’ll—”

“I need to be alone for a minute,” Barry choked out, jumping up and practically running for his old room. He didn’t hear Iris follow, but he locked the door behind him, just in case.

He sank down onto the old bed, reaching for a pillow and pressing his face into it, hoping it would smother the telltale sounds he could feel bubbling up in his throat.

Joe and Iris would want to know why he was laughing.

Len _escaped._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've ever driven through Indiana at all, especially the stretch up to Chicago, you know that is some skeeeeetchy country to be driving through. They should consider themselves lucky it was Joe that caught up with them, and not werewolves or some shit.


End file.
